While the Trenton R-9 School District was among schools listed as having not met certain academic standards under the federal “No Child Left Behind” law, Superintendent Craig Noah said that the numbers being used to make those determinations don’t tell the whole story and that R-9 students are doing well in the classroom.
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While the Trenton R-9 School District was among schools listed as having not met certain academic standards under the federal “No Child Left Behind” law, Superintendent Craig Noah said that the numbers being used to make those determinations don’t tell the whole story and that R-9 students are doing well in the classroom.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released a list of districts in the state who are not meeting the federal standards in communication arts and mathematics, two of the criteria being examined for student proficiency. In the case of Trenton R-9, the state lists the entire district as having not met the communication arts proficiency level while Trenton High School is listed as not having met the math level and Trenton Middle School is listed as having not met either standard.
To be listed as making adequate progress, 19.4 percent of students had to be listed as proficient in communications arts while the math goal is 9.3 percent. According to Noah, there are 11 subcategories in which test results are reviewed to determine whether or not a district is making adequate progress. The federal government requires an entire school be classified as failing to make adequate progress if any subset of students falls short of the goal. Trenton was reviewed in two subcategories and it was the Free and Reduced Lunch subcategory where the state said the district fell below the percentages required to meet the proficiency criteria.
“If you look at the scores overall, you can see that our students are doing well,” Noah said. “But it’s the one category which causes us to be listed as not making progress, even though the numbers say otherwise.”
A strong example is at the middle school level, where federal guidelines state that adequate yearly progress is not being made in either communication arts or math. When looking at the percentages for all students, the numbers in communication arts are at 33.3 percent while the math numbers are 46.8 percent.
“These are outstanding numbers,” Noah said. “But again, because we fall below in one of those other subcategories, we are seen as not making adequate yearly progress.”
Noah noted that in the case of middle school math, Trenton was listed as not making progress because the number of students who did not complete testing was higher than the 5 percent allowed.
“We were at 6 percent and that is something that is easily correctable,” Noah said.
Noah said he did have a concern with high school math numbers, which showed that only 4.5 percent of students were making progress, including only 2.5 percent of those students on free and reduced lunches.
“That does concern us and we have already started taking a hard look at how we can address that,” Noah said.
Rissler Elementary School met the AYP mark in both communication arts and mathematics, which Noah said can be attributed to the staff who work with those students.
“We have an outstanding staff at the elementary school and you can tell that by the fact that we did meet the criteria in all areas,” Noah said. “We have great people there.”
According to information provided by DESE, students in 1,033 of Missouri’s 2,055 schools did not make adequate yearly progress on standardized testing last year. This is the first year such a list has been compiled as part of the “No Child Left Behind” legislation, that sets a goal of having all children proficient in reading and math by 2014 and requires states to set annual achievement targets.
While there are no penalties for schools appearing on this year’s list, districts that run federally-funded education programs for low-income students, such as extra reading instruction or tutoring, could face consequences if they remain on the list next year. Those schools would have to give students the option of transferring to another school within the district, assuming a district has more than one elementary or high school.
Schools on the list for three years would be required to offer more services. And after five years, schools could be required to replace personnel or extend the academic year.
Looking at other school districts, Pleasant View R-6, Laredo R-7, Spickard R-2 and Princeton R-5 all met the AYP criteria. Grundy R-5 was listed as having not met AYP in communication arts as a district and at both the elementary and high school level. Gilman City did not meet communication arts AYP at the high school and elementary levels, although it did meet the overall communication arts AYP. Tri-County at Jamesport did not meet the high school math AYP.
(Some information for this story taken from reports from The Associated Press)